So it turns out interrogation experts from every branch of the military and intelligence services agree: Torture doesn’t work.

That’s good news for Catholics, because it confirms one of the basic realities forgotten over the last decade: that Catholic moral teaching is rooted in practical reality and not simply Ivory Tower Cloud Cuckoo Land theory.

Indeed, if there is anybody laboring to live in Cloud Cuckoo Land (and to snooker as many unwary Christians into that fantasy world as well) it is the politicians and Media Talking Heads of the Thing that Used to be Conservatism, who have fanned out over the airwaves since May 1 to try to get you to ignore the teaching of Holy Church on torture and cheer for the lie that

enhanced interrogation

torture is what bagged bin Laden. Instead of acknowledging the testimony of actual experts in interrogation, our deeply self-serving spin doctors for the Right’s ongoing legacy of support for torture lie and say the Bush/Cheney torture policies saved us and got bin Laden. Why, only the other day, Rick Santorum was making a spectacle of himself and illustrating everything that is wrong with the pro-torture Right by telling John McCain (JOHN McCAIN!!!!) that he just didn’t understand how torture works. Can’t beat Meghan McCain’s response to this pontification from one of the GOP’s damp-handed proponents of grave, intrinsic evil: “Rick Santorum telling my father doesn’t know about torture is like Carrot Top telling Lebron James he doesn’t know about basketball.” But Rick Santorum is simply doing his bit to spread the ongoing message of the bulk of the GOP: that they are the real heroes because their wise torture policies are what bagged bin Laden.

Nonetheless, that is, indeed, a lie, as McCain himself pointed out:

“It was not torture, or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama Bin Laden.”

These spin doctors well know this because, as we see above, their own interrogation experts have endlessly told them so. But the apologists trot that lie out now in order to muscle in on some Bin Laden Slayer Luv—and in order to fend off the fact that the policies they urged were not only immoral, but dangerous and stupid, too.

Note the breathtaking selfishness and unpatriotism of this latest attempt at self-justification by the Torture Apologists. The sudden resurgence of the torture meme on the Right since bin Laden’s death has nothing whatever to do with what’s good for keeping America safe from terrorists and everything to do with what’s good for the people who authorized, excused, pushed—and are now afraid of being condemned—for torture. As the interrogators above point out, torture is actually harmful to our intelligence gathering capabilities in a host of ways. And, as has been abundantly documented, torture had nothing to do with nailing bin Laden. And yet, the torture meme is trotted out by Right Wing talking heads anyway because they are now unpatriotically and dangerously putting exonerating themselves above the good of the country.

It is customary at this point for torture defenders to trot out the normal round of foggifying excuses, evasions and untruths. There’s the ever-popular “Oh sure, torture is wrong but waterboarding is not torture” bunkum. There’s the “We only tortured three high value targets” lie (something you should really check with all these dead detainees, some of whom our own government describes as murder victims). There’s the “We only did it to the worst of the worst” lie (which will come as a surprise to the completely innocent Maher Arar and the beaten-to-death innocent cabbie Dilawar). And there’s the “We never used any other torture besides waterboarding” lie, which will be news to the detainees who were beaten, suffocated, and frozen to death. All these, in addition to being lies about the past, are also lies being used to fuel the very present and future trajectory of the Right back into power as the Torture and Proud of It Party.

That matters, because we are talking about what is best for America, for our safety, and for our eternal destiny as Christians. What got bin Laden was good old-fashioned meticulous investigative work and traditional humane interrogation. The Let’s Reclaim our Proud Heritage of Torture guys, who are playing for some Me Too Love in the wake of the bin Laden killing, want us to turn our back on these productive methods because they are all about excusing their own failures. If that means pushing failed policies that harvest worthless and misleading intel and send us on wild goose chases costing millions of dollars and thousands of man hours, well, better America suffer another 9/11 by doing lousy intelligence work than that these self-serving party hacks in the media face the consequences of their incompetence and lies.

That’s the thing about consequentialism: It’s not just wrong, it’s stupid, too. Consequentialism is always, in the end, a Faustian Bargain. You sell your soul and get nothing in return. Much smarter to just listen to Holy Mother Church when she says, “Treat prisoners humanely and don’t abuse them.” It’s not only the right thing to do. It’s the smart thing to do. Heck, it’s what the Greatest Generation did when they were fighting the Nazis. And guess what? It worked!

JoeyG,
***
I’m sorry I misunderstood what you were trying to say. I now see your point.
I agree with you on using the States to fight abortion. Especially, after the recent revelations of the monster Kermit Gosnell, from Philadelphia.
As someone who is conservative on just about everything, I have no problem with state legislatures regulating abortion mills out of existence with fees, taxes, and requiring them to have the same life-saving equipment that a dentist or plastic surgeon is required to have.
Again, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Posted by JoeyG on Monday, May, 23, 2011 12:30 AM (EST):

@Nick from Detroit:

I don’t have much time to respond right now, but I beg you first just to go back and reread my post. I didn’t say a pro-choice candidate - not in the least!

What I’m saying is that some pro-life candidates might not foreground their anti-abortion agenda and might not be interesting in doing much in office - in the sense of “activism” - having to do with that issue. I only mean that often the pro-life ‘platform’ in politics is a lot of light and no heat. Candidates run on it and other issues get pushed under the carpet; and when push comes to shove, and these folks actually get into office - I’m thinking particularly of the legislature - they don’t get a whole lot done on that issue at all, because there’s a kind of gridlock there. And in the meantime, we miss candidates who make it a less pronounced part and kind of admit the futility of trying to make positive law on abortion at that level, but could get a lot done in some other important areas. [Please note, I’m talking about the CURRENT political landscape. We’re just not realistically going to see a constitutional amendment coming through on this. I think the States are just most realistically the place to begin if we’re going to legislatively make inroads against abortion.]

To say all of this is not in any way to deny that abortion is still a preeminent issue for political concern, a graver evil than sundry other evils which the State permits or perpetrates, or that we should keep working against it. It’s hard to use the “one-issue” critique - which is what I’m doing here - without getting lumped in with the Bernardine-type crowd and other liberals. I’ll admit, there’s a whole bloc out there that says, “We can’t become one-issue voters” and actually *mean* to say, “Abortion ain’t that bad.” But just because a lot of folks are incorrect and use this argument falsely doesn’t mean that it doesn’t bear a strong point and could be used correctly. In no way am I trying to argue that Catholics could or should vote for a pro-choice candidate; I’m simply arguing that, if a chosen pro-life candidate is also going to do harm and evil as an elected official, then we need to check out priorities: maybe we ought not vote for either.

Posted by Nick from Detroit on Monday, May, 23, 2011 12:11 AM (EST):

JoeyG,
***
How would your hypothetical anti-torture, pro-choice on abortion, just not as his “top priority” candidate vote on federal and Supreme Court justice nominees?
All so-called “pro-choice” politicians are the same. They are pro-abortion and will always vote to make abortion as easy to get as possible. The only exceptions are those who are in Red leaning states who try to stay under the radar. People like Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Harry Reid.
Also, what is your nuanced <i>anti-torture<i> candidate going to do about it if the president is implementing EITs? (Because, in reality, there are no “pro-torture” candidates.) He is in the same boat as the Pro-Life member of Congress, is he not? EITs are the law of the land.

Posted by JoeyG on Sunday, May, 22, 2011 8:02 PM (EST):

@CatholicBri, I agree 100% on the problem of Catholics voting for pro-abortion politicians.
I’ll also say this, though. Not in any way do I mean to denigrate the significance of the issue of abortion in our country, but we need to keep perspective. From a standpoint of government law right now I think the best shot we have of beginning to undercut and overturn Roe v. Wade is to have, on a State-by-State basis, aggressive bans passed by the legistatures in order to eventually force the issue back into the courts. Alternately, we can look for a constitutional amendment at the Federal level to protect life, but a whole number of things need to align before that can happen.
With abortion, we’re fighting to restore what was lost. Imagine if the pro-life movement had been as activistic and vigorous in 1971 or 1972!
On many other issues - like the definition of marriage, foreign policy regarding war and treatment of detainees, and others - we are in that epoch. We need to keep one eye on those issues while not losing focus on abortion. On marriage and torture, this is 1972: we can fight the good fight now and keep same-sex marriage and torture from becoming institutionalized realities, or we can fight for 40 more years after the fact of each of those instituionalizations and suffer the same slow road of restoration that we’ve been working through with abortion.
My only point in all this is that I would settle for Federal Congressional candidates who at least will not expand abortion or vigorously oppose abortion restrictions, if they are strong on these other issues. If the choice is between a pro-torture candidate who says he will vigorously fight to overturn Roe v. Wade and a candidate who is anti-torture and promises not to expand abortion rights nor to oppose restriction, but admits that he will not be working the issue as a top priority, I - personally - would vote for the latter, all other things being equal. Now, if things were aligning in such a way so as to make it seem likely that a piece of Federal Legislation might actually be passed that would make a dint in abortion, then that might change things. But, I think our voting process requires this kind of nuanced perspective: to look for those who will do the most good and the least harm, and to have a little savvy about what kind of good can actually get done (practically speaking) relative to the office in question.

Posted by CatholicBri on Sunday, May, 22, 2011 7:46 PM (EST):

@JoeyG
Thanks for your thoughtful reponse. The only point I would add is that forming our conscience is not something we do in a vaccuum; or just a blog - we form our concience through the heart of the Church - the Pope and the bishops who are in union with him guided by the Holy Spirit. And both our current Pope and his blessed predecessor have said that it is not acceptable for Catholics to vote for pro abortion politicians unless there is a proportional danger. 100 is not proportional to 1.3 million, no matter how you slice it. Saying every soul is of infinite value doesn’t change the math - voting for a “leader” with the blood of 1.3 million children on his hands because he is innocent of 100 tortures is not the act of a well formed conscience. If you say you could not vote for either - that may be. But the tragedy of recent Catholic voting is it has been pro-abortion.

Posted by JoeyG on Sunday, May, 22, 2011 1:56 AM (EST):

@CatholicBri,
To take your last point first. I will grant that the translation of the Hebrew from the Torah better given as “thou shalt not murder” rather than merely “kill.” But Christ comes to complete the Law, does He not? And He even discusses this particular point from a mountainside in Matthew just so that we don’t miss the parallel. There, in Matthew’s fifth chapter, Christ first says that not a dot of the Law may be relaxed or done away with: we may not interpret “Thou shalt not murder” any more loosely than the plain reading allows. But then he goes on to tighten the interpretation, it seems: (Verse 21-22; RSV): “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire.” Raises the bar a bit, doesn’t it?
I don’t know that you can prove your point against pacifism absolutely from Scripture, particularly in appealing to the examples of the Old Testament where brutality is seemingly commanded. The appeal is rife with exegetical problems, and besides that you have the New Testament to then deal with, esp. James who instructs that “mercy triumphs over judgment.” There’s the witness of the confrontation in the Garden when men who were certainly unjust came to take Christ away and murder him; but He would not be defended by the sword, and warned his disciple (Peter or not) that those who live by the sword will perish by it. The martyrs of the early Church seem to have adopted a similar attitude, willingly accepting death rather than resorting to violence against the admittedly unjust Empire in defense of their infringed upon rights and dignities. Plenty of evidence from the Patristic era demonstrates a predominate Christian attitude of pacifism toward war as well, although certainly not a consensus of Fathers can be invoked to demonstrate this; the fact that Augustine finally carefully works out a doctrine for when war is just which shows that he still sees deliberate killing as a recourse that is complicated and needs to be carefully justified by ethical principles to jive with the command to love.
I don’t mean to indicate by all of this that I am an absolute pacifist nor argue for pacifism - by no means. It’s just that the value of the distinction between “killing” and “murder” must be read contextually within the Old Testament, first, and then understood within the entire developed body of Law revealed through Scripture, Tradition, and in the Natural Order. Our task as Christians isn’t to find the loopholes of permissiveness anyway, but to become ever more perfect, to weed out anger and hate, and to love even our enemies and do good to those who hate us - with all of which I am sure you agree. In working out how best to do that, conversations like the one Mark is having over torture are valuable; and it’s also valuable to keep a wide lens on all of the smart and holy folks who have taken seemingly extreme positions (such as pacifism, from Hippolytus of Rome to Dorothy Day).
As to your question about voting, that seems to be the upshot of the present conversation. In the end you must rely upon your conscience to decide whether either of the candidates is electable, and it is through discussions like the present one that we so form our consciences. I would only suggest that if it is *sure* that the election of *either* candidate would effectively lead to any assault upon human dignity, I personally could not conscientiously vote for either. As I see it, a single human person is of infinite worth, and I can’t weight proportionality between; no candidate whom I am *sure* will launch assault upon a *single* human person’s dignity will get my vote. But, as I say, we’re all bound to our consciences as we form them. The primary point is that we do so earnestly and well.

Posted by anonymous on Sunday, May, 22, 2011 12:58 AM (EST):

Hmm, a Catholic preaching not to torture. Judging by the RCC’s past, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black.

Posted by CatholicBri on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 9:50 PM (EST):

Mark,
I always find your blogs challenging and thought provoking. My question: suppose I am faced with an election where my choice is someone with a questionable position on torture; or someone who boldly and publicly supports abortion. So do I vote to save 100 people (per year? per 4 years?) who might die of torture; or vote to save 1.3 million babies a year who absolutely will die from abortion? A nation that says it is ok to kill a baby in the womb for convenience or after the fact “contraception” is a nation that will never be concerned about torturing or euthanizing others. Mother Theresa said abortion is the largest threat to world peace; Jesus said get the beam out of your eye before you try to help your brother get the spec out of his eye. Abortion is the beam in our nations eye - it is why we are blind. Torture is the spec. If they each killed an equal number of people, your demonizing of Mr. Bush would make a lot more sense. He did a lot of good work to reduce abortion; most of which Mr. Obama has undone, in spite of it being an issue “above his pay grade”. If Catholics voted exclusively pro-life, legalized abortion would be well behind us, and we could be focusing in on eliminating torture.
Further - when people quote “thou shall not kill” they often overlook that the original hebrew was “thou shall not kill the innocent”. There were situations in the bible when God told His people they would go to war: He didn’t say “you shall avoid war at all cost”. In one case His specific instruction was to kill all men women children and beasts; and take no prisoners. Just sayin - some people want to raise pacifism to the ultimate virtue; it is not always a virtue at all.
God be with you!

Posted by Shan Gill on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 9:28 PM (EST):

Have read Andrew Cohen’s article and am unimpressed. His argument is dodgy without details. He cites no sources to bolster his own credibility, but only says that John Yoo is wrong. OK. So he thinks John Yoo is wrong. What proof is he offering?

Torture is wrong, but there is nothing here or in Cohen’s article that convincingly points to sources that prove “enhanced interrogation techniques” did not contribute to the intelligence leading to bin Laden’s execution.

Not sure what point Mr. Shea is trying to make, really. A more cogent and relevant article on the evil of torture could have been made without referencing Cohen’s silly article.

Posted by Nick from Detroit on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 7:06 PM (EST):

JoeyG,
***
You are very welcome.
It’s nice to have a discussion on this subject, with someone with whom I disagree, and not be called a liar, or, told that I’m no different than the Gestapo, Torquemada, John Kerry, San Fran Nan Pelosi, etc.
***
I will definitely read paragraph 27 from “Gaudium et Spes” (I have already read para. 2298 of CCC.)
God Bless!

Posted by Nick from Detroit on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 6:53 PM (EST):

Terrye Newkirk,
***
You are entirely welcome. Not that I did anything, really.
And thank you for your kind remarks, I appreciate it very much.
God Bless!

Posted by Nick from Detroit on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 6:50 PM (EST):

Miss Miller,
***
I could use the same quote, from Matthew 25, against you.
The question of whether letting innocents die in a terrorist attack is, or is not, morally acceptable, when you could have done something to possibly prevent it, has already been answered by Christ when He said, “Whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.”
***
It is not as cut and dry as you make it. If it was, there would be a clear declaration from the Church on the subject. And, there wouldn’t be all these comments, on all these threads.
Just as I could never see myself waterboarding Christ, nor, could I ever see myself sticking a bayonet into Christ. But, as a soldier, I was prepared to do just that to “the least of these” twenty years ago. And, many of our brave warriors HAVE had to do just that. I don’t think they are going to Hell. The difference is that Christ is innocent, and the terrorist is not.

Posted by JoeyG on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 6:47 PM (EST):

@Terrye, see Evangelium Vitae #62: “No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church.”

@Nick from Detroit: Thanks for the conversation; I will keep you in my prayers as you continue to read and discern. Do not overlook the very next paragraph of the CCC from the one you quote, which may help to put into perspective the matter of the Church’s past allowances of torture. I also recommend taking a look at paragraph 27 of “Gaudium et Spes” (easily found via Google).

All the best! If you ever care to address any further questions to me, do not hesitate to get in touch: armiger.gilberti[at]gmail[dot]com.

Posted by Nick from Detroit on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 5:43 PM (EST):

JoeyG,
***
(3) Thank you for the illustrative clarification on “physical pain.” I figured you were using technical, theological terms, but, I wanted to be sure. Your explanation was very informative. I like your “Little Shop of Horrors” reference. I’ll bet Mr. Shea would’ve use “Marathon Man”. Ha-ha!
***
Now, you see, you have done what no one has been able to do in the years of debating this subject: Seriously rethink my position!
I have never been confronted with the argument that consent of the subject, also, affects whether, or not, waterboarding is torture.
***
I guess I centered on “intent” because of the way paragraph 2297 of the CCC is worded: “Torture which uses physical or moral violence [...].” I took this to mean that it was the intent of the action that determined if the act was torture, or not.
I, also, took the omission of labeling torture as a “moral evil,” as it does with abortion (para. 2271,) as an indication that the Church doesn’t consider torture to be an intrinsic evil. After all, the Church accepted torture in the past. Like I pointed out to Mr. Shea, God allowed stoning in the time of Moses.
As I understand it, monitering the heart-rate and EMTs are necessary because passing-out and cardiac arrest are real possibilities, when it is not done correctly, so, better safe than sorry.
***
But, as I stated, you have made a very strong argument, and, I’m going to have think, and above all PRAY, about this, a lot.
Thank you, for your insights.
God Bless!

Posted by Brandy Miller on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 5:25 PM (EST):

@Terrye: Laws must always be formed in accordance with the laws of God. When they aren’t, they are no longer just laws. Therefore, there should not be a distinction between personal morality and state policy as state policy should be informed by our personal morality.

Christ’s teaching, and not the law, is the determination of whether or not a thing is immoral. We are not justified in doing everything within our power to protect our citizens; the ends do not justify the means. We may not kill innocents in order to protect our citizens, we may not rob others of their dignity to protect our own, etc. etc.

The Catholic Church teaches that we are permitted to act in self-defense, or in defense of those who cannot defend themselves. To the extent that the military acts in self-defense or in defense of the weak, it acts morally. To the extent, though, that the military acts beyond those borders it is not acting morally and must be stopped. Christ is a warrior. He fought then and fights now, by working to change hearts and minds, to win converts and to correct errors.

It isn’t important whether or not the interrogation technique was legal or how often it was employed. Roe v. Wade is legal and yet not moral. Even one abortion is immoral. Christ has told me that whatever I do to the least of my brethren I do to Him. This is my standard on whether or not an action I take is acceptable and moral.

Posted by Terrye Newkirk on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 5:02 PM (EST):

Some folks do not get the distinction between personal morality and state policy. The first is governed by a well-formed conscience. The second is a function of LAWS.

As persons, we are to be loving, forgiving, long-suffering, etc. As a nation, we are to do everything within the law to protect our citizens. Therefore, to call a lawful government act “immoral” is to miss the mark badly.

Those of you arguing that waterboarding is immoral, therefore, are also arguing that the military is immoral, because Jesus wouldn’t be a soldier. Please remember that Jesus worked a miracle for a centurion, and that the very soldier who pierced His side is in Heaven (St. Longinus).

As a point of LAW, waterboarding in the case of the post 9/11 terrorists was entirely legal. I daresay that most who are arguing against it don’t even understand what it is or how often it was used. But that’s the liberal way, evidently.

Finally, I want to thank you, Nick from Detroit, for your service—and for injecting some clarity into this muddled debate, which seems at times to be more about proving oneself right than about examining the question dispassionately.

Posted by Nick from Detroit on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 4:51 PM (EST):

JoeyG,
***
You are welcome. I’m glad to have a civilized conversation on this subject for once.
(1) To quibble, just a little bit, the Church has from the beginning taught against abortion. The Didache (1st century A.D.) condemns it. Even the pagans of Greece, in the 5th century B.C., spoke out against abortion and euthanasia in the Hippocratic Oath. But, I take your point that waterboarding didn’t come the fore until after the attacks of September 11th, so, “decades” may have been too much.
I am new to this split amongst Catholics in the blogosphere, but, I have been arguing with liberals and libertarian Paul-bots about waterboarding for a few years, on conservative political sites. I am unaware of any condemnation of the waterboarding of our troops during SERE training, which has been known for many years now.
Unlike you, I had the complete opposite reaction when I learned that we waterboarded our troops (I don’t remember when, but, I believe this info came out fairly early on, maybe ‘03 or ‘04?) I was still wrestling with whether, or not, waterboarding crossed the line, as this technique was new to me. When I learned we had been doing it to trainees for decades, I came down on the side that it wasn’t torture, because people don’t volunteer to be tortured. Nobody volunteers to be electrocuted, or burned, or beaten, do they? You can’t be conditioned to withstand being burned, because you know it is going to hurt, a lot, and will cause permanent damage.
***
(2) I wouldn’t if that was ALL they said. I’m sure in true professorial tradition they would explain, ad infinitum, their reasons. And, I would read them very carefully. I’m sure these would go far to change my mind, as they, and others, have in the past. As I stated previously, my catechetical training wasn’t very good, going into my twenties. It was watching Drs. Hahn and Martin, along with Fr. Scanlan and others, on EWTN that changed the errors of my thinking on many Church teachings. So, on that count, you are wrong, sir.
Just this week, on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, I heard his guest name three veterans of the Hanoi Hilton who disagree with McCain on waterboarding/torture. I would hope these theologians would take their opinions into as much consideration as McCain’s. (I can’t remember their names, and, a quick search yielded no results. You’ll have to take my word for it.) But, again, my “expert” vs. your “expert” doesn’t really get us anywhere, does it?

Posted by Brandy Miller on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 4:15 PM (EST):

@Nick: The question of whether or not what has been done to those prisoners is morally acceptable has already been answered by Christ, who told us that whatever we do to the least among us is what we have done to Him.

Posted by JoeyG on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 1:03 PM (EST):

@Nick from Detroit:

Continuing on our discussion of your point #3 above:

Rather than dealing with waterboarding, since again I’m not entirely sure of the ethics of this as it applies to SERE training versus interrogation, let’s use the more plain example which you allude to above that is provided by dentistry.

When I say that the drilling of teeth is a “physical” evil, I’m borrowing a term from moral philosophy that does indeed pertain to all suffering, even if it is redemptive. Suffering is a result of the fall, the loss of the preternatural gift of impassibility which was enjoyed by our parents in Paradise. Eve would have brought forth children without suffering, but after the fall, she was to labor in bearing children and thus suffer pain. The suffering involved in bringing a child into the world - to say nothing of raising that child! - is thus a result of a fall and bears the mark of an evil (privation, lack) in the physical order. This is precisely what makes redemptive suffering redemptive: Christ, who was without cause to suffer, bore our iniquities and raised suffering’s potentials to something of a supernatural order. But when we fast and thereby suffer hunger, the result in the physical order is the same as the result of the suffering undergone by a child in India who starved by privation of nourishment. That it is willingly undergone for Christ’s sakes and sublimated in the case of fasting changes the ultimate effect for us in the supernatural order (and even, to some extent, in the natural order, as grace transforms nature). But a physical evil it remains, nonetheless. A foriori full-fledged martyrdom, which is the gross physical evil of death - and all death is a physical evil - which is meritorious, according to tradition, even to the point of removing temporal punishment due for sin.

So, with dentistry, as with all surgery of any kind, there is physical evil taking place. When my tooth is drilled, even for the sake of healing me, there is the mark of deprivation of the perfection of the human nature as it was originally designed. I bear in my body the marks of the Fall, one of which is passibility; accordingly, my teeth rot, and must be drilled and filled. And the pain I undergo in that process, whatever good may come of it, is physical evil. What we’re concerned to ascertain is how and when it becomes moral evil as well.

Certainly, it would seem that if such drilling were inflicted upon me without a restorative end, without necessity, and without my will, then it would be a physical assault on my person. Thus, the moral evil here is of the object-intention of inter-personal violence. The dentist does the very same thing. He even, in the direct act, seems to “intent” the same thing: access root of lower first premolar. But the moral object of the act in the case of elected dental work is “healing;” in the case of Dr. Orin Scrivello in Little Shop of Horrors, the object of the act is violence.

In the first case, I elect to undergo the pain in order to restore health the my teeth. In the second case, I am subjected to that pain unwillingly. Even if, in both cases, the dentist ultimately will fill and restore the tooth, I have been assaulted in one case and not the other. In fact, in both cases I may be “healed” - perhaps Dr. Scrivello chose to drill a cavity even against my will. But, still, I have been caused physical and mental pain to which I was unwillingly subjected: I have been tortured.

***

Now, you say, “it all comes down to intent,” but this is not quite the sum of it. Intent cannot make what is called “an intrinsically evil act” okay to do. Torture is an intrinsically evil act. Dentistry may be used as torture. Dentistry is not an intrinsically evil act; the drilling of a tooth is not an intrinsically evil act. If it is used to torture, THAT is the intrinsically evil moral action - not the physical process. Here, though, is the crucial point! The object attains primarily due to conditioning factors of the activity that are more fundamental than the intent. Whether or not torture is the object-intention of the act has to do with particular facets of the activity as such which are even more fundamental than intention; it is not ultimately that the Doctor “intends” to harm me that makes it torture. This intention is bound up with the fact that he is using an unwilling subject: but the subject, and his unwillingness, are more fundamental to conditioning the act than the intention of the torturer.

Let’s move to my former analogy. As I pointed out, a prophylactic is not always used as a contraceptive. For example, in homosexual “intercourse,” a condom serves a prophylactic effect alone; it CANNOT serve a contraceptive end, because there’s no conceptive end that could ever result from an act of sodomy. The intrinsic evil of contraception does not attain. Suppose, though, a heterosexual with HIV uses a condom with his partner. His *intent* is to save the latter from the effects of his condition. And insofar as this goes, his intent may be a step in the right direction, as our Pope has pointed out. But the contraceptive end attains regardless of his intention in the matter; the intention here, as with the case of the dentist who chooses an unwilling subject, is bound up with the fact that this man has chosen a “subject” who is theoretically susceptible to becoming impregnated. This situational reality so conditions the act of using the condom that, whether it is the “intent” of the user or not, the condom attains to the objectively evil end of contraception. The moral act is thematically characterized by the object in this particular situation as it did not apply in the case of two members of the same sex.

Regardless, then, of whether it may seem permissible to subject a willing subject to the distress and legitimate “pain” of waterboarding - the fact that heart rate must be monitored and EMTs on the scene indicate that there is a real pain, a real “physical evil” involved - waterboarding seems certainly to attain to the object-end of torture when the action is performed on a subject who is unwilling.

Posted by JoeyG on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 12:06 PM (EST):

@Nick from Detroit,

Thanks for your thoughtful replies. I’ll deal with the first post, in which the points are numbered, and try to bring in what it germane from the second post where it fits, although I think much of our “disagreement” there is rhetorical and immaterial, and I’m sure you don’t mind sticking with the substantial points.

(1) There is a difference between a situational ethics and an ethics which is motivated by situation. The former takes its very criteria of evaluation from the situation in such a way as to become problematic. But all ethics, conversely, to some degree most respond to situation and, furthermore, be timely. Abortion of a kind existed as ancient practice, even as far back as the Egyptians (and maybe longer); it was with us all throughout the modern age and usually regarded almost as an unfortunate eccentricity of the rich (when they even bothered with it and didn’t opt instead for less-painful infanticide); but you don’t see the kind of robust movement against the practice that we know as “Pro-Lifers” until around or after Roe v. Wade. By analogy, maybe waterboarding - as applied to our troops by our own government - is torture; I’m not sure on the point, to be honest, because it’s arguable (at least) that there’s a different moral object obtaining in that situation. In any event, this didn’t come into the limelight for people to get concerned about it until the aftermath of its use on detainees in the war on terror. To take another example: prison rape has become a byword of humor in our culture, there being hardly a modern comedy movie that doesn’t make reference to it. Yet it is a heinous and vicious act and a real problem epidemic throughout the prison detention system. And yet we don’t use this as a rhetorical pin against rape prevention groups that start up, saying, “Well, where have you been all along if this really concerns you?” Anyway, I can only speak for myself; I didn’t know that this kind of ‘training’ was being done in SERE until it came out in this debate when I was first involved so many months ago. I was kind of horrified to learn about it, and I still do not know where I stand on waterboarding our own troops as training. I am, however, more settled on where I stand on waterboarding enemy detainees or terror suspects.
(2) Neither Prof. Hahn nor Dr. Martin is a specialist in moral theology. But even if they were, and both came out and said, “waterboarding is torture,” would you really come to see it so on that score alone? Personally, if I were in your position, I would not. Indeed, even if they were credentialed moral theologians, I’d want to know about how they arrived at their conclusions upon this point; I’d want to know something about the methodology with which they plied their trade. Now, as I have said above, respected moral theologians in the Church often appeal to ethicists and experts in fields outside theology proper in order to conduct the case studies which allow them to conjecture applied principles of Catholic morality for a particular situation. In this case, for example, I guarantee that they would consider the testimony of John McCain of value. They would put very little stake in BDS and likely want to look at a vast swath of examples of simulated drowning used as interrogation techniques across history. They wouldn’t even be concerned with the relative “safety” of what the US authorized compared with what other cultures or groups had done; nor, if, in the future, we were able to strap a virtual reality headset to a person and spray a fine mist upon them to provide the same sensory experience with absolutely no physical danger of drowning (the risk of anaerobic panic and its like unavoidable as part of the fear experience, though); in all these cases, their focus would be on what the waterboarded one *felt* and what was his experience of the ordeal. They would ultimately ask about it, “Ought human beings to be put to this use?”

(3A) If I may take a break, I will return to answer your point #3 more completely because I think it’s an important one. I think you give too much weight to the matter of “intent” in the case of ectopic pregnancy and indirect abortion. The weightier part of the consideration has to do with your other statement: “it is permissible to remove the fallopian tube, even though the baby will die.” This is actually more crucial to the so-called “double-effect” principle. It is permissible to remove the tube: it is never permissible to *directly* kill the fetus, regardless of intent. Even though your intent be to save the mother, you may never take the intrinsically evil action of murder. Take this as a preface of sorts, but there’s much more in that point #3 I’d like to discuss. I just want to cue you in on the importance - or potential immateriality - of “intent” (which your own post seems to acknowledge).

Posted by Howard on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 10:42 AM (EST):

OK, I have no idea how “prisoner” became “visitor” in my post above.

Posted by Howard on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 10:40 AM (EST):

We have it on pretty good authority (such as that of Fr. Gabriele Amorth) that even black magic sometimes (though not always) “works”. In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton makes the point that this is precisely why certain “practical” peoples of antiquity, notably the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, were seduced by it. Of course there is a price to be paid up front, and also one at the end.

As a result, I’m not at all interested in the question of whether torture “works”, as though that were enough to decide its morality.

But for those who consider only consequences, consider the growing body of personnel who have been trained to “turn off” all sympathy for the visitor and, perhaps for “the greater good”, “just follow orders”. At BEST these people will become your neighbors. At worst, their training completed, the government will find other jobs for them to do. (In case you haven’t guessed, I am not a believer in American exceptionalism.)

Posted by PJ on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 8:47 AM (EST):

I especially like when the body of a post claims a tone of aggrieved-party, why must you sling mud instead of debate, I am only seeking to educate and enlighten, but then the parentheticals within are essentially: (This is what you sound like: HURR DERPA DERRR HALIBUSHITLER I’M A SOCIALIST WEENIE)

keep up the good work, everybody!

Posted by Nick from Detroit on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 3:16 AM (EST):

JoeyG,

I believe it is important to be very precise when discussing what the Bush administration ACTUALLY authorized in EITs. Not leftwing propaganda talking-points.
And, since the Spanish Inquisition and the Gestapo/Japanese, i.e. putting the victim on a board and lowering his head into water, get conflated with what the president ACTUALLY authorized, I don’t think it is being “ungenerous” to define what waterboarding, as ACTUALLY authorized, (have I made my point yet?)consists of, step by step.
As for “lighten up,” it is Mr. Shea who calls people like myself “liars” and dares lump me in with San Fran Gran Nan Pelosi, and her ilk, just because I refuse to…confess?...that EITs are torture. (HALLIBURTON!!)
I think I addressed your objections about “intrinsic evil” in my previous reply. Let me know if I missed anything.
I DON’T want to get into “the business of throwing names around,” Mr. Shea does. He is the one who constantly brings up all the interrogators who agree with his view. Funny how that works, huh?
If you read my comment closely, you will see that I wrote, “Pitting your “experts” against my “experts” is about as fruitful as it is in debates about the global warming hoax.” So, I think we are in agreement, as far as listing the people who agree with our particular beliefs goes, right?
I do want to appeal to trusted authorities within the Church. My mind can be changed.
It is Mr. Shea who constantly appeals to pro-abort, pro-death, liberals (with BDS, Ha-ha!) as his authority. Is that fair?

Posted by Nick from Detroit on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 2:40 AM (EST):

JoeyG,

To clarify, I am not “Nick B.” I am Nick from Detroit.
To answer your points in order,
(1) I am also a veteran, U.S. Army ‘88-‘92, of Operation Desert Shield/Storm. Albeit, I was a helicopter mechanic who never faced a shot fired in anger. (Although, I did see, and hear them in the distance, on the border.)
I roasted in 115 degree heat when I first got to Saudi. In January and February I froze my backside off on guard duty, which also deprived me of much sleep. Was I tortured by my own country? Of course not. It was part of the job. So, how can doing the same to unlawful enemy combatants (who used to be hanged, according to the Laws of War) be considered torture?
You may not find it far-fetched, but, I do when it concerns highly regulated training like SERE. This was not my point though. My point was where were all these pillars of piety while our military personnel were being “tortured” for decades in SERE training? No, this only became a big deal when Bussshhhhhhh! ordered it. (HALLIBURTON!) Sounds like situational ethics to me.
(2) In my questions to Mr. Shea, on Patheos, I originally asked him to “cite some Pro-Life, loyal to the Magisterium, Catholic theologians who claim EITs are torture or are intrinsically evil.” These were my criteria. Theologians like Drs. Scott Hahn and Regis Martin will do.
(3) You definitely have me beat on education, as I’m sure Mr. Shea does. Also, I was catechized in the ‘70s and ‘80s, not that I was enrolled every year, and had 3 years of Catholic school, 2nd, 11th, and 12th. This was in the wake of the catechetic abuses that were committed in the name of Vatican II. I can only go by what I have learned in the past decade, or so. But, someone who has over 12 years of education as a priest, Fr. Robert Sirico, has said that waterboarding is not torture.
I’m not sure I agree with your explanation of “the object of the act.” A condom, like any physical object, can be used for numerous purposes. What is was intended for, or not. As can a knife, gun, or baseball bat. These can all be used for benign purposes, or, for evil ones. If a homosexual intends to use a condom to pervet the marital act, this is an evil act. It all comes down to intent.
If I hit someone and they die, whether a crime was committed is determined by my intent. If I was defending myself from attack, no crime was committed. If I was attacking someone, even if my intent was not to kill, I am criminally responsible, because my intent was to do harm. Means, motive, and opportunity are elements of a crime; and are not determinative of whether a crime, if any, has occured.
In the same way, procuring a surgical abortion is ALWAYS intrinsically evil. It can NEVER be justified for any reason. If waterboarding is intrinsically evil, then it can never be justified. Which means Mr. Shea, and co., were silent for decades while this evil was committed during SERE training.
Conversely, during an ectopic pregnancy, if the situation threatens the life of the mother, Catholic ethicists have said it is permissable to remove the diseased fallopian tube, even though the baby will die, because the INTENT is not to end the life of the baby, but, to remove the diseased organ. The death of the baby is the unfortunate by-product of the procedure.
In your drilling of teeth analogy, I’m not sure what you mean by “physical evil.” How can suffering pain be called a physical evil, no matter the reason for the suffering? Suffering is endured, and is redemptive. Only actions can be evil, not people or things, i.e. matter. So, if drilling the teeth is to alleviate pain, how can this be a physical evil?
Back to the intent thing. If someone pours water, repeatedly, over the head of a prisoner with the INTENT to cause pain and suffering, with no care or consideration as to the well-being and health of the prisoner, that would be torture.
But, if someone pours water, repeatedly, over a towel placed over the prisoner’s mouth and nose with the INTENT to see to it that no harm comes to the prisoner, and that every precaution is taken to see that the prisoner is in no danger, for the purpose of obtaining information, this is not torture. And this is precisely what the Bush administration did.
Thank you for your reply and thoughts. They were interesting and considerate.
God Bless!

Posted by JoeyG on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 1:08 AM (EST):

@Nick from Detroit:

Firstly, Mark has frequently and in sundry places described the technique of waterboarding and linked to sites containing its graphic description over time. Are you truly so ungenerous in argument that you won’t allow that a person might reasonably use the word “underwater” to describe a condition of being under water that is being poured as opposed to submersion in water? (By the way, I checked the Oxford English Dictionary, and it seems to allow for the former meaning just as much for the latter; interestingly, the definition of drowning mentions submersion in particular, so people who have actually died from waterboarding throughout its historic use really need to be schooled in language, methinks.) Yes, I guess I’m being a little wry there, but the point is: lighten up, be a little more generous, and give one the benefit of the doubt as a fellow coworker in the truth. The Catholic Church calls us to that, at least - see John Paul II, Reconciliation & Penance, Para. 7.

Secondly, for a discussion of how “intrinsic evil” works in the Church’s definition, see my comments above. We’re talking about a MORAL ACTION here. And torture is a MORAL ACTION, just as is murder. Murder is not to be conflated with “killing” because “killing” is a broader, physical action, not a fully moral action (that is, an action directed to a specific end by the movement of the will toward a particular good). So with many of the forms of violence which might constitute torture. Those violences may not be, in and of themselves necessarily, always and everywhere torture. But when used as torture - such as against detainees in order to coerce them into giving information - then they are (forgive the seeming tautology) torture.

Thirdly, if it really matters that much to you and you want to get in the business of throwing names around, one priest who calls waterboarding torture is Father Gerald D. Coleman, SS, who is the Vice President for Corporate Ethics for the Daughters of Charity Health System, a position which presumably requires some degree of training in moral theology. There is also Father Bryan Massingale, a moral theology professor at Marquette University, who described the phrase “Enhanced Interrogation Technique” in 2007 as a “euphemism… instead of torture.” So, I have two to your one priest card to play. But I don’t know how sound these moral theologians are; and for that matter, I know of certain of Fr. Sirico’s interpretations of Catholic Social Doctrine to which I take exception. In the end, then, I don’t think it’s very reliable to play 52-pick-up with a deck of clerics to see who wins the debate, there being nothing magical about Holy Orders which assures a just interpretation on every debatable point of doctrine. If to that you riposte that the first one to produce a Bishop gains the hand, then I’ll ask, what if I were to produce Cardinal Bernardin? Would I still win? I doubt it - I personally wouldn’t give out a win on that score, at any rate.

So, my suggestion is to appeal to the authorities which are sure - the written Magisterial pronouncements of the Church - and try to stay coolheaded as we parse through pertinent facts and try to discover in them their relation to what Mother Church has said. Approaching from that standpoint, we don’t need to worry about BDS or SARS or any other boogeyman epidemic crippling the cause. Sound fair?

Just to clarify, I am not “Nick B.” I am Nick from Detroit.
I figured you wouldn’t answer my questions.
You should re-read Hitchen’s Vanity Fair article, your definition of waterboarding is false. The subject is not held underwater, he has water poured over his head, with a towel over his mouth and nose. The fact that you can’t even get the particulars of this act straight shows that you have no credibility discussing the issue.
You live in your BDS fantasyland and argue with the straw men you concoct.
I don’t believe I insisted that waterboarding be used “so rarely,” or, that it was a “remedy for Evil.” More straw men.
There are many things that are unpleasant, but, necessary in society. God commanded “eye for an eye” and stoning in the days of Moses because these were more humane punishments than those practiced by the ancients. If stoning is not intrinsically evil, how can waterboarding, i.e. POURING WATER OVER THE SUBJECT’S HEAD?
Pitting your “experts” against my “experts” is about as fruitful as it is in debates about the global warming hoax.
You can produce no bishop that will condemn EITs as intrinsically evil, either. I can produce a priest, Fr. Sirico, who says waterboarding is not torture, but, you already know that. All you have are pro-abort, pro-death lefties to bolster your bogus arguments.
Waterboarding, i.e. POURING WATER OVER THE SUBJECT’S HEAD, and the other EITs authorized by the Bush administration are the epitome of humane treatment of unlawful enemy combatants (is this another Orwellian term?) This is why they asked Mr. Yoo to write his memo. So, they wouldn’t cross the line into torture.
Why is this so hard for bleeding heart liberals and Paul-bots to understand?
Stop using the Catholic Church as cover for your BDS.

Posted by Robert R. on Saturday, May, 21, 2011 12:19 AM (EST):

hopefully there’s no one in our gov’t leadership like this Mark Shea fellow who seems to think God expects us to be a bunch of spinless weenies when there’s a bunch of crazie’s out there who are constatly planning terrioust attacks against us. We have a responsibility to do all we can to protect innocent life with any means nessary short of torture…..... and waterboarding is definitly not torture. I have family in the military and know for a fact that waterboarding has prevented 2 major terrioust attacks and several small attacks, saving thousands of lives. Liberals like Mr. Shea would rather we just try to make friends with these creeps while thousands of innocent civilians are murdered.

Posted by PJ on Friday, May, 20, 2011 11:13 PM (EST):

Any interrogation technique which is capable of causing the death of a healthy adult if only slightly improperly applied falls far outside the boundaries of humane treatment.

Any argument that it’s humane to roll the dice with prisoners’ lives is idiotic, and any argument that it’s acceptable to be inhumane has no claim to Catholic morality.

Posted by JoeyG on Friday, May, 20, 2011 9:59 PM (EST):

One more quick note, if I may. I think it’s very important in all these discussions to distinguish what the Church means by “intrinsically evil.” When the Church refers to an “intrinsically evil act,” She means “the object of the act,” and that is a “moral object.” The crucial point here is that that moral object may never be reduced to or conflated with any kind of physical object. This becomes very confusing in cases where we’re dealing with something like contraception (and we saw something like this confusion arising over the Pope’s remarks in the interview with Seewald that was released this past year). A prophylactic, such as a condom, is a contraceptive - that is, when it is used as a contraceptive. When it is used outside of a situation where no contraceptive end attains to the act - if, for example, I wear one on my nose walking down the street - then the object of the act isn’t contraception. One might argue - as I did, in regard to the Pope’s remarks - that when a condom is used in homosexual relations, it has no contraceptive end which can possibly attain. And so, there’s no sensible way in that situation to talk about the “intrinsic evil” of the use of the condom. It’s irrelevant. To be sure, there’s evil taking place! But it has little to do with the prophylactic. All of this was a way to steering the conversation (at that time) ‘round to the only case which seemed to be a ‘problem’ in any sense at all, rather than something we all already knew and agreed upon: did the Pope mean a situation in which a contraceptive device is used for prophylactic purposes even while a contraceptive end (object of the act) may attain?

What’s the point of this analogy? The point is that the same thing may apply to all kinds of physical actions. Just as the intrinsic evil of the object of contraception means “using a contraceptive as a contraceptive,” so too does the intrinsic evil of torture require a kind of reflexive reduplication: it must be torture in the object of the act, torture as torture. This isn’t saying that intentions or circumstances change the quality of the action. I mean that there might (arguably) be a way of finding how a certain action (physical) has a different object according to its proximate end. The best example I’ve seen so far is drilling teeth: if it is to remove a malady, then this physical evil has a different moral object; but if it is to cause pain or to coerce the will of a person, then it has the object of the act of torture.

Posted by JoeyG on Friday, May, 20, 2011 9:49 PM (EST):

If I may interject here:

To Nick, in reply to your most recent comment, a few points:

(1) First of all, I’m not sure why our own military’s treatment of its own is to be regarded as a paragon and test case in the way you seem to take it to be. Your entire argument based around what we will and will not do to our own troops as somehow illustrative of whether EITs such as waterboarding are or are not torture seem heavy-laden with opportunity costs to me. One might object, for example, “Could a regime such as North Korea or Hussein’s Iraq claim the same logic?” “No,” you would reply, “because, in those cases, those dictatorial regimes don’t care for the welfare of their own troops in the way that we here in America do.” But note that you’ve taken the onus upon yourself to demonstrate your premise for this to have any logical validity or weight. Is it so far-fetched to think that some small portion of our military, which is trying to train extremely efficient combat machines, might employ tactics in doing so which are morally problematic? As a veteran myself, I would argue that it’s not so far-fetched at all. In any event, though, this is the burden of proof that lies upon you if you want this line of argument to be truly demonstrative of any real ethical point.

(2) You challenge Mark to find an orthodox Catholic theologian who thinks that EITs such as waterboarding are torture. I find your wording here interesting, in the way that you’ve preliminarily qualified the kind of theologian you want. Don’t get me wrong! I know that there are heterodox theologians out there offering their opinions on sundry matters. And I look for ones I can trust and find reputable. But when I sit down and think about *how* I find such, it’s an interesting reflection. I sort of just know when I see it. My own informed conscience and theological opinions become a sort of rubric in this day and age when, on the one hand, it’s rare that you actually get a theologian being expelled from the Church, even for pretty grievous theological offenses, and, on the other hand, the orthodox ones rarely bother with an imprimatur and nihil obstat (if the Diocese they’re in will even provide one!). I guess my point is, I’d want to know what qualifications you would put upon this matter ahead of time because I know a couple theologians I might name, but in naming them, I run the risk of exposing them if they don’t meet your test. In short, if you’re going to make a request such as this one, perhaps be more explicit in what you’re willing to accept and what you will reject.

(3) Finally, I don’t claim to be a theologian. I have my undergraduate degree from a Catholic seminary where I continued afterward to earn 64 graduate credits in theology. It is a school of good repute with a highly regarded faculty. If I may say without insinuating a boast, I didn’t do poorly there in terms of academic achievement. All that having been noted, I reiterate that I don’t claim to be a theologian; that is, I’m not saying, “Here, I’m the guy you asked for, and my answer is.” All I mean to point out by posting my ‘credentials’ (such as they are) is that I at least know a thing or two about the way that the discipline of moral theology proceeds in the Catholic academy, in peer reviewed journals, etc. Since you’re unlikely to find Magisterial teaching of the nitty-gritty kind that says “waterboarding is torture,” these specialists do case studies and evaluations, and often they appeal to the same kinds of secular sources that Mr. Shea frequently uses in order to bolster his arguments. I must admit that I’m not always pleased with his rhetoric in presenting his conclusions, but I will say that his methodology isn’t all that different from what you find Catholic theologians in the university and at think-tanks like the NCBC doing all the time.

Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, May, 20, 2011 8:33 PM (EST):

Nick:

In your zeal to make excuses for drowning, you are overlooking beating, freezing and suffocating prisoners to death. That you even ask “How is [holding somebody under water until they start to drown] “contrary to [the] respect for the person and for human dignity?” How does [holding somebody under water until they start to drown] do injury to the image and likeness of God?” is too depressing for words. I repeat: if what you advocate is so compatible with Catholic teaching and so beneficial for us all, why are you insisting it be done so rarely? Since you are convinced that this is the remedy for Evil, why are you insisting that remedy be applied so rarely and contradicting yourself about how simultaneously harmless/terrifying-and-will-breaking it is. That you continue to do this nonsense when you have interrogators from every branch of the services telling you, “It doesn’t work and is counter-productive” while you can produce no bishop in the world who approves of it is a mark of how desperate Torture Apologists are getting. That you trot out the hoary epithet “bleeding heart liberal” to describe adherence to the Church’s teaaching that prisoners are to be treated humanely (not, you know, held underwater until the mammalian panic reflex kicks in and they start to inhale water and drown) is what some of us call moral common sense. And that pointing all this out is now being called calumny and libel when it is a documented fact that these and other tortures were, in fact, authorized by the Bush Administration is what used to be known as The Big Lie.

Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, May, 20, 2011 8:16 PM (EST):

William:

Why vote for mortal sin? Why not just vote for a candidate who doesn’t advocate mortal sin? Why trap yourself in such an unnecessary dichotomy?

Posted by Nick on Friday, May, 20, 2011 8:13 PM (EST):

Mr. Shea,

How many bleeding heart liberals, who suffer from B.D.S. (Bush Derangement Syndrome,) can you stuff into one column? Yes, I know that is ad hominem, and I don’t care.

I asked you these questions last week, on Patheos, but you never answered. So, I will try again. So…..you can’t produce an orthordox Catholic theologian who claims that EITs are torture or intrinsically evil? I didn’t think you could. Or, do you have more quotes from that eminent theologian Glenn Greenwald?

If waterboarding is intrinsically evil, which means that it is NEVER morally permissible, why is it morally acceptable to perform it on our own military personnel? The argument that “they can stop it when they want to” is a distinction without a difference. We don’t beat, burn with cigarettes, or electrocute SERE trainees. Why? Because that would be torture, no matter if they chose to be subjected to it, or, could stop it whenever they wanted.

These acts would cause SEVERE pain and permanent damage, the definition of torture. Pouring water over the subject’s head, putting them into a hot/cold room, and sleep deprivation does not cause severe pain and permanent damage. Beatings, drowning, and suffocation ARE NOT enhanced interrogation techniques, and, therefore, were not authorized by the Bush administration.

You can repeat the Big Lie that EITs are torture, and that the Bush administration promoted torture, as much as you’d like. It doesn’t make it true. In fact, it is a calumny and libel against Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, Thiessien, et al. This IS condemned by the CCC. Quit endangering your own soul, and seek professional help for your BDS.

If you can’t, or won’t, answer my above questions, just answer these two simple questions: How is waterboarding “contrary to [the] respect for the person and for human dignity?” How does waterboarding do injury to the image and likeness of God?

Posted by William McVay on Friday, May, 20, 2011 8:09 PM (EST):

I will vote for a “pro-torture” candidate over a pro-choice(ha!) candidate anyday. It seems that we catholics arent dealing very well with the large elephant in the middle of the room very well. IN 2008 catholics voted for B.O. and thus re-opened the flood gates for abortion on demand (especially internationally in places where it had been de-funded previously). Sorry but I cant disagree with this article more and us catholics need a big ole dose of reality when it comes to politics. God help us!!

Posted by Fuquay Steve on Friday, May, 20, 2011 7:38 PM (EST):

Oh comrade - A little sensitive are we? Nick makes a great point but then again, this is a topic we need to really really focus on especially since you feel so inclined to bring it up again and again. Have you ever asked yourself ‘why do I write about this so much?’ You might want to reflect on that for a while. Or then again not and insult me some more. I’m big and I can take it - especially from someone as religious as you because I know you don’t mean to insult and demean (it is against some virtue you value - or should- I’m sure).

Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, May, 20, 2011 7:25 PM (EST):

We do cut people open on operating tables, therefore cutting people open in a a back alley is not against Church teachings.

“There is no evil in making someone who is evil feel as though they are drowning even though you have no intention in actually drowning them…you’re only scaring them.” I’m curious how you measure this, Nick. How evil do they have to be? Can I try this “drowning bad people” thing on my kids when they are bad? Or are they not evil enough. Do you have an Evil-o-meter for measuring just when it’s okay for the State to start drowning people? For instance, our courts are full of evil people. Or at least people we are pretty sure are evil. Presumably then, you advocate terrifying them by drowning them, just so long as you know that you aren’t really going to drown them? Would you agree that this brutally effective method of evidence gathering should be used on the many many evil people currently going through all that long and boring ‘due process’ jazz? If not, why not? Merely because they citizens? So what? You’ve already made clear that there is “no evil”—none at all—in making “evil people” feel the terror of drowning. So why are you so unAmerican as to only limit the blessings of this panacaea for Evil to terrorists?

Also, why are you so over-focused on waterboarding (a habit of Torture Apologists). Why do so many Torture Apologist so resolutely ignore that, in addition to the blessing of drowning, we have also inflicted beatings, freezings and suffocation on prisoners which resulted in around a hundred deaths. Do you agree that when somebody *dies* from abuse, it’s a good bet it was torture?

Please don’t use Catholicism as an excuse for justifying grave intrinsic evil with shoddy, shameful and embarrassing sophistries for war crimes. Find me one bishops—just one—who is willing to say that drowning, beating, freezing, and suffocating prisoners is compatible with Catholic teaching. Then find me an interrogator who will say that prisoner abuse and torture were beneficial for our intel program and not counter-productive, stupid, and dangerous for American security.

Posted by Nick B. on Friday, May, 20, 2011 6:53 PM (EST):

We do water board our own Special Forces and it doesn’t cause any physical harm or damage…it doesn’t kill anyone and doesn’t violate Church teachings. There is no evil in making someone who is evil feel as though they are drowning even though you have no intention in actually drowning them…you’re only scaring them. It’s not pulling out finger nails or pulling teeth. You cannot lump water boarding and other “EIT’s ” with raw morbid torture. Please don’t use Catholicism as a political soap box. Thanks! : )

Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, May, 20, 2011 6:09 PM (EST):

Hermit:

You write, “You advocate a frustrated, non-involved voting citizenry….why?” I don’t. You merely imagine that refusal to vote for candidates who support grave intrinsic evil has to mean non-involvement. In fact, it mean more involvement. So, for instance, one may say many things about Ron Paul supporters, but “non-involved” is not one of them. Yet he manages to oppose both abortion and torture (that’s not to say I’m voting for him, merely using him as an example). I’m advocating free Christian citizens voting their conscience and not feeling trapped and helpless by the false choices imposed on them by the System. Urging Christians to use their freedom to break with the false systems of the Kingdoms of This World is not urging frustration, but liberation. Think different. Break free!

Fuquay Steve:

Your post, being translated, means, “When GOP talking heads fan out into the media to try to brag about their torture policies and make the case for resurrecting them, opponents of these policies should shut up, even when the evidence shows that these policies are not only gravely immoral, but dangerously counter-productive. Long Live the Party! Pay no attention to the Magisterium! Anyone who questions this is a nancy boy who loves liturgical dance!”

Your logic has a brutal sort of Soviet propaganda simplicity to it, Steve. You’d have done well at Pravda.

Posted by Fuquay Steve on Friday, May, 20, 2011 5:54 PM (EST):

Mark, if I didn’t think it was May of 2012, i’d swear it was 2010 or 2009 because you are waxing nostalgic for your favorite topics to make you feel so superior. Remember, pride needs to be confessed before you receive on Sunday but please avoid the liturgical dancers as you approach the altar.

Posted by Michel on Friday, May, 20, 2011 4:36 PM (EST):

Thank you, Mark. The only thing I would add is that even if torture did lead to the killing of OBL, who can possibly feel safer for it at this point? How many more OBLs have we fostered over the last decade? Should we not reflect “on the serious responsibility of everyone before God and man” (http://www.ncregister.com/blog/vatican-statement-on-bin-ladens-death/)? Surely 9/11 did not occur in retaliation to our preaching the Gospel in the mid-east, did it?...

Mr Shea,
There is a law of the land that approves abortion. There is a political party (Democrats) that has as its platform, abortion on demand. There are heretic catholics who publicly support it, and defend it. Agreed it is an intrinsic evil, abortion.
Then there is the other intrinsic evil, torture. It NOT the law of the land, in fact there are laws on the land making it criminal, as well as international law doing the same. There is no political party platform
(you refer to it as all conservatives - Repubilican)that advocates torture. There are NO candidates, I am aware of, that propose to change the law. There are individual opinions among Catholics that have a discourse about torture, for and against a particular method, but they are individuals. (Responsible for there own souls before the Jewish carpenter’s Son)
The point is, you advocate us citizens to refrain from voting because, in you writings, both political parties are wrong. Voting for either party would constitute grave sin and condemn us citizens to hell. ( Your position since this rant began.)
I object, vigorously!
I will NEVER vote for a candidate who is pro-abortion, of either party.
I can NEVER vote Democratic because they have a National platform advocating abortion. I can, however vote for any Republican who, being Pro-Life, and may question torture and its usefulness in past cases. I would not vote for candidate ( of either party) who openly defies Church teaching on torture.
Your position of NOT voting defies Church teaching, because we have clear choices. We may choose to support more strict laws against torture, reinforce those already on the books. We need to vote to protect the innocent lives of the defenseless children. Anything less is morally wrong. ( Even voting for a Pro-life democrat is a tempting damnation.)
You advocate a frustrated, non-involved voting citizenry….why? There are clear choices.

Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, May, 20, 2011 3:41 PM (EST):

Bobadilla:

I keep to common sense and don’t say that anything which causes discomfort to a prisoner is torture. That’s a favorite for torture apologists who want to deny the reality that Bush Torture Apologists are defending torture. Typically, I focus on four things: drowning, suffocating, freezing, and beating as tortures we deployed. There are, of course, lots of other ways of dehumanizing and degrading prisoners which fall in the gray areas so beloved by torture apologists. So, for instance, the humiliations heaped up prisoners as Abu Ghraib caused no lasting tissue damage. Yet most sane people would call what happened at Abu Ghraib disgusting and evil and prisoner abuse anyway.

The way to avoid all this is to Listen to Your Mother and treat prisoners humanely. Then you don’t have to come up with clever nonsense calculated to pretend that prisoner abuse and torture are really just “enhanced interrogation”. You also don’t have those awkward dead bodies lying around, mute witnesses to the fact that if that wasn’t torture they died from, it’s sure a good imitation.

Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, May, 20, 2011 3:33 PM (EST):

David:

By your logic, in a free society, it is perfectly fine for every Catholic here to give full consent to abortion and to support candidates who want to make abortion on demand legal since “that’s the action of the government” and therefore their full-throated support for it as individuals is without moral consequence.

Too much Fox News has warped your moral and intellectual senses. As for me, warning of the everlasting fires of hell comes, not from reading Salon and Slate (I rarely do, not enough time), but from reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which warns that torture (beloved of FOX viewers as much asw the abortion so beloved of Salon and Slate writers) is intrinisically and gravely immoral and that those who die impenitent in grave sin (which includes supporting and promoting grave sin) will face the everlasting fires of eternal damnation. That’s not something you read in Salon or Slate too often.

Posted by Bobadilla on Friday, May, 20, 2011 3:31 PM (EST):

“Well, my dentist has done things to me which, if done on someone without their consent, day after day, would be torture.”

Exactly Jacobus. There are certain actions which in and of themselves are NOT torture, but they become torture in certain circumstances. Thus incarcerating an innocent person for for no reason is torture, while jailing a criminal or enemy combatant is not. Making careful distinctions between criminals and enemy combatants, moral techniques and immoral torture is hard work. Morally smug condemnations are easy and fun.

Posted by Brandy Miller on Friday, May, 20, 2011 3:19 PM (EST):

@David: While you are partially correct, as we are not held accountable for the actions of others but only of our own, we belong to a country where we are permitted to vote people into and out of office. Therefore we do hold responsibility when our voting selections lead to crimes being permitted - this is just as true with abortion and euthanasia as it is with torture and things like that.

Posted by David T on Friday, May, 20, 2011 3:10 PM (EST):

Mark—Our “eternal destiny” as Christians is not dependent on the actions of our government. Too much Salon and Slate has warped your moral and intellectual senses.

Posted by ToddC on Friday, May, 20, 2011 2:49 PM (EST):

Mark, I missed them but now I see them. Thanks!

Posted by Timothy on Friday, May, 20, 2011 2:40 PM (EST):

Pretty much what I was going to point out, Jacobus. What a ridiculous thing to say.

Posted by jacobus on Friday, May, 20, 2011 2:22 PM (EST):

“If waterboarding is torture, then we torture our own troops.”

Well, my dentist has done things to me which, if done on someone without their consent, day after day, would be torture.

Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, May, 20, 2011 2:21 PM (EST):

Todd:

I provided you links. Why not read them?

Posted by Mark Shea on Friday, May, 20, 2011 2:19 PM (EST):

Bobadilla: I’m not accusing all who disagree with me of lying. I’m accusing the pols who supported torture and the media shills who apologized for it of lying, because they know better. Lots of people repeat their lies, but don’t know they are lies. Nonetheless, the claim that waterboarding is not torture is a lie, as is the claim that it’s the only form of torture we used, as is the claim that only three peopl were tortured, as is the claim that torture got bin Laden, as is the claim that torture is a valuable tool in intel gathering, as is the claim that it is not counter-productive. People are entitled to their opinions. They are not entitled to their own facts.

Terrye: You are simply wrong about the facts, as my links demonstrate. The evidence demonstrates that torture had nothing to do with finding bin Laden and was, in fact, counter-productive. The *only* “basis” people have for the claim that it “worked” is that people who authorized torture tell you to trust their word that it worked, despite the fact that the evidence shows otherwise. It’s like trusting OJ Simpson’s word as the sole “real” account of how his wife died. They have a very vested interest in making the claim that the crimes they committed were really very effective. What they don’t have is any evidence for their claim beyond their word. The evidence is all against, not only the morality of torture, but the utility of it.

Finally, the argument that drowning a helpless prisoner 183 times is not torture because (on a voluntary basis) we train our troops to endure drowning is one of a wide variety of fallacious claims dealt with here. It’s like arguing that there is no such thing as “stabbing” since surgeons plunge knives into human flesh all the time and that is perfectly moral.

Also, this again overlooks the fact that drowning is but one of the tortures we used. It also overlooks the fact that around a hundred prisoners *died* from the tortures we inflicted. When people die, it was torture. It also overlooks the fact that we have tortured innocents and have even threatened and terrorized children.

The Church says “Treat prisoners humanely”. It’s not just the right thing. It’s the smart thing. You get good intel that way. And you government doesn’t have to lie to you and tell you “Torture worked!” when their crimes and incompetence become known.

Posted by jacobus on Friday, May, 20, 2011 2:17 PM (EST):

“I’m all for humane treatment of all criminals, it’s really hard to be friends with someone who is doing his damnedest to kill you. “

The Lord Himself couldn’t have said it any better.

Posted by ToddC on Friday, May, 20, 2011 2:05 PM (EST):

So, Mark, I noticed John McCain stopped short of saying what did work. So what method was used to obtain this information? Maybe I missed it, but I don’t hear anyone stepping up and saying what it was that forced KSM to give up the info. I’ll bet it was the jelly donuts. Mark, I respect you greatly, but your claim that ‘this’ set of people have more credibility than ‘that’ set of people is a little weak. Could it be possible that the info obtained through waterborading was used to do the legwork that so successfully tracked down OBL? Who are these people you claim to be the ones doing the “legwork”. Also, who are these detainees who were “beaten, suffocated, and frozen to death.”? I’ve never heard or seen any information about them in *ANY* media outlet. If you could provide me and other readers more info it would help us understand the situation better. As a side note, I worry about an adminstration that tries to court martial Navy Seals for allegedly punching a detainee in the stomach, yet lauds Navy Seals for shooting an allegedly unarmed man in the face. Thanks and God bless.

Posted by Terrye Newkirk on Friday, May, 20, 2011 1:55 PM (EST):

If waterboarding is torture, then we torture our own troops. Really? Sorry, Mark, I can’t agree. The waterboarding of three terrorists helped prevent further 9/11-style attacks and did ultimately lead to the finding of bin Laden. Every person and nation has the right to self-defense. War is always ugly and tragic, but, sadly, it is sometimes necessary. In the past our “domestic terrorists” would have been summarily executed; ditto for spies. Now we house and feed them and give them due process, but that’s fine. As with other murderers, the bottom line is to protect soceity. I’m all for humane treatment of all criminals, but it’s really hard to be friends with someone who is doing his damnedest to kill you.

Posted by Bobadilla on Friday, May, 20, 2011 1:50 PM (EST):

What a breathtaking lack of charity to accuse of lying all those you disagree with. It also shows a bigger interest in moral self-congratulation rather than rigorous moral analysis. There is a HUGE moral difference between torture and harsh interrogation techniques which are designed to never inflict permanent harm and only used to gain information of future attacks. That is not to say that such techniques are morally unproblematic. But condemning equally all techniques used irrespective of distinctions, while also condemning all who attempt proper distinctions as liars, is not only intellectually unserious it is also immoral in itself.

Also, please note that you continue the practice of trying to pretend that waterboarding is the only form of torture deployed, while ignoring the fact of prisoners murdered by torture. Also, note that you simply ignore the fact that innocents have been tortured by us.

Finally, note the fact that, in addition to ignoring the clear teaching of Holy Church on treating prisoners humanely, you are also ignoring the fact that your sole source for the claim that “it worked!” are Bush Administration officials who provide no other evidence than their own “Trust me”. Meanwhile, the people who have done the legwork demonstrate that, in fact, torture had nothing to do with getting bin Laden and real interrogators (as distinct from the pols who ordered it and shills who excuse it) say that, on the contrary, it was worthless and counter-productive.

For with my prejudice,
I have something to rant about.
Without my rant,
the world I live in loses its meaning!

Posted by wavesurfer on Friday, May, 20, 2011 11:46 AM (EST):

“Ivory Tower Cloud Cuckoo Land Theory”

That’s the name of my next band.

Posted by Kevin Tierney on Friday, May, 20, 2011 11:46 AM (EST):

Object to waterboarding from a moral standpoint, but the idea it gave no evidence….... just isn’t true. Charlie Sheen constantly states he is “winning.” That doesn’t make it so.

The simple fact is that Attorney General Mukasey, the past 3 heads of the CIA, and those who actually looked over the decision to prosecute over this stuff concluded:

1.) Waterboarding isn’t torture. (Though people are certainly free to disagree, and I find it tough to justify.)

2.) The information obtained was real and actionable.

3.) That information provided the hunt for Bin Laden.

Yet those like Mr. Shea have to constantly push the “it doesn’t work” canard, because that is the more compelling argument. yet it was clear that in those certain circumstances (and it was deliberately tailored to those certain circumstances) it worked.

Shea should stick to what he feels are the moral pronouncments. Everytime he tries to enter into something in which evidence actually matters, he demonstrates himself more and more a child. I’m still not sure where I fall on “ehanced” interrogation techniques. I find torture wrong, yet I think there is legit debate whether or not those techniques were torture. Yet I also feel it’s a far more honest position than Mr. Shea’s, which is dishonest to its core.

Posted by Andy on Friday, May, 20, 2011 11:24 AM (EST):

The pro-torture thinking reveals the motives of its proponents in exactly the same way ESCR advocates show their thinking. When you point out to ESCR advocates that it has come up with exactly zero cures, they simply don’t care. Who cares what the viable, non-morally questionable (or damnable) options are? We have an agenda to push! It’s exactly the same with these “enhanced interrogation” advocates. Who cares if it works? We have an agenda to push!

Of course, the effectiveness of torture or ESCR don’t determine its moral value. If ESCR were a miracle cure or if torture got every single terrorist to sing on the first try, they would still be intrinsically evil acts. However, the stalwart advocacy of these issues speaks volumes about those who push despite their impotence.

Posted by Brandy Miller on Friday, May, 20, 2011 11:06 AM (EST):

How we treat other people is how we are treating Christ. There can be no justification for torture, and that goes doubly for anyone who claims to love Christ.

Posted by Vermont Crank on Friday, May, 20, 2011 9:58 AM (EST):

Dear Mr. Shea. I am already pining for Bin Laden. Who do you think our next Emanuel Goldstein will be?

Posted by PJ on Friday, May, 20, 2011 6:04 AM (EST):

All the more disgusting that so many of these torture apologists try to present themselves as the “Family Values” candidates.

Would we allow a pro-abortion politician to claim the “Family Values” mantle? Then why do we allow pro-War Crimes politicians to claim it?

I’m sorry, support for any intrinsic evil extinguishes all “values” credibility.

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Mark Shea

Mark P. Shea is a popular Catholic writer and speaker. The author of numerous books, his most recent work is The Work of Mercy (Servant) and The Heart of Catholic Prayer (Our Sunday Visitor). Mark contributes numerous articles to many magazines, including his popular column “Connecting the Dots” for the National Catholic Register. Mark is known nationally for his one minute “Words of Encouragement” on Catholic radio. He also maintains the Catholic and Enjoying It blog. He lives in Washington state with his wife, Janet, and their four sons.